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Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Live, Laugh, Love by Guest Designer Barb Black

Spring
made an early appearance here in the Northwest and Mother Nature has been going
crazy slapping a fresh coat of color on everything. Between the extraordinarily
blue skies, cherry blossoms, forsythias, crocuses, daffodils, and tulips, it’s
as if an art supply store exploded on the world. I love it!

Nothing
inspires me so much as nature’s colors and that’s exactly where the idea for
this piece came from.

I
began by painting the dragonflies with yellow acrylic paint. While the paint
was still wet, I used it as glue and sprinkled it with yellow glitter. I also
painted “laugh” with the same yellow paint and splattered it with a little gold
ink to give it more depth.

For
the background I chose one of the tags from Gina’s Super X tag set. I didn't
have a really clear idea where I was going with it, so I played until it felt
right. That’s how most of my projects go, and it’s a fun way to work. No
limitations - yay!

I
began by sponging blue, red, and pink paint onto the tag. Some of it naturally
blended into a nice purple shade. I wanted to lighten it up a little so when it
dried, I took a piece of sequin waste and sponged on white dots. The white dots
were too stark, so I washed over the tag with diluted pink acrylic paint. Then
I decided it needed more movement and I wanted to bring more blue back into it,
so I got out my stencil and sponged on the blue. A few flecks of light green
later and I was done!

From
there, all I had to do was to stamp “live” and “love” onto the tag with white
acrylic paint, and then glue on the other pieces I had made. Well, what’s
spring without some bling? So, I added on the pink rhinestone flowers. To
finish the piece off, I curled some pink wire that I had left over from another
project and tied it on with some fibers. Now I have a little bit of springtime
to hang in my house all year long!